Time and again, I have observed a very common error that is practically ignored by sales managers and HR: the sensitive difference between having order takers and having salespeople on your commercial team.
I know it may seem like an exaggeration, but believe me: this confusion is costing much more than you imagine. And the worst part? Many companies don’t even realize they’re feeding this problem.
The difference nobody wants to see
In summary, an order taker, as the name suggests, responds to what is requested and their work is associated with receiving and directing people, based on what they need. For this professional, the more efficiently and quickly they resolve the customer’s problem or need, the better.
This is because the sooner they finish, the faster they will have closed their work and won’t generate accumulations or delays. Also note that, in general, an order taker is mostly passive in the conversation – that is, they receive the information they need from whoever asks and ask the essentials to help with the doubt or need presented.
With these points, you can easily identify that this scope differs significantly from a salesperson’s routine. This is because they need, with good reason, more active behavior, since those who want to sell a lot and well need to present what they have, as well as need to understand more about the customer to show how their product or service aligns with their needs.
I know that so far I’m not telling you anything new.
But it’s precisely at this point – and in this difference – that the problem lies: we have many people hired as salespeople or pre-salespeople, but who actually act as order takers.
What is an order taker?
Order takers are those who receive customers interested in buying a product or service from a company, but focus on administrative processes: making the necessary records in the CRM or spreadsheet with the minimum possible questions; complying with the internal process steps for the company’s new opportunities; and passing the customer as quickly as possible to another stage or department.
Order takers don’t use sales techniques and don’t explore beyond what the customer tells them. They succeed with leads (we call a lead any opportunity that contacts the company – or that the company contacts – and that may or may not become a customer) who are decided and clear in their requests, generating a preference for this “ease” and seeing customers who require a bit more interaction as “difficult.” They act with each opportunity in an operational way, focused on seeking the maximum “completed actions” possible.
Although the salesperson also acts as an order taker, since they also answer questions, guide, and record, their work is much broader than that. A salesperson needs to analyze their customer and their scenario, and they can do this through active listening to better understand their pain points and needs, as they can ask the right questions to extract important information.
Time is also an important factor, because for the order taker, the faster they resolve the demand, the better. For the salesperson, in most cases, this logic can even make them lose the sale.
A good salesperson also manages to make clear to the customer the advantages of making that purchase, because they know the customer’s pain points; the most efficient ones can even exemplify well the consequences of not doing anything to change their scenario. And I’m not talking about “pushing” product – I’m talking about helping the customer see what they haven’t seen alone yet.
By the way, Rain Group research shows that salespeople who ask deep discovery questions – those that go beyond the basics and explore impacts, consequences, and aspirations – are 74% more likely to close deals. That’s not insignificant.
This difference in scope is even more evident when we talk about B2B sales (when selling to other companies), where negotiations are usually more complex and therefore demand strong technical skills from the professional, such as studying customer needs, presenting solid arguments and data, commercial proposals, and negotiations.
Can you imagine a professional who works with sales or pre-sales, that is, a professional who needs to sell a product or service, asking only essential questions to complete the minimum information present in the CRM fields?
Well, yes. But this happens every day.
The deadly paradox of Inbound leads
When we talk about companies that have a strong presence of inbound leads, that is, leads who requested contact, the problem is even more critical and less perceived.
Let me explain the paradox: the fact that, in general, inbound leads have a higher conversion than outbound leads (leads where the company made contact) and that it’s “not necessary” to arouse in the customer the desire to want to know more, since it was “they who searched,” ends up generating a reduction in proactivity, creativity and, mainly, the minimization of technical knowledge – aspects that are essential for a salesperson.
It’s as if these salespeople atrophied their skills and became mere order takers.
But you might ask me: “But why does it get worse? If we’re reaching out to the customer, I agree we have to be more active. But if it’s the customer who reaches out, it doesn’t make sense because they’ve already shown interest, right?”
But I tell you affectionately: of course not!
Because if just the customer’s inquiry were enough, inbound sales would convert at 100%, wouldn’t you agree? And the reality is quite different: HubSpot data shows that only 27% of inbound leads are qualified for sales, and of these, less than 20% convert without an active qualification and consulting process. The conversion rate of inbound leads varies from 5 to 15% depending on the sector.
So no, the inbound lead doesn’t “sell itself.” It needs a salesperson just as much as any other lead – sometimes even more, because they’re comparing, researching, evaluating. And if you don’t know how to guide them, they’ll go to the competitor who did.
A salesperson cannot be just a receptive channel, considering that they only need to instruct a lead to get from point A to point B. Even less to be content with only what is voluntarily said.
They need to challenge themselves to ask questions that help understand more about what the lead wants and what they don’t want. Knowing more is the minimum step for those who want to sell now and always; for those who want to contribute so that in an eventual negotiation, relevant information that is decisive at the time of sale is not missing.
Matthew Dixon and Brent Adamson, authors of “The Challenger Sale” study, revolutionized the way of thinking about B2B sales by showing that salespeople who challenge the customer’s thinking – who bring insights, who show angles the customer hadn’t considered – have 40% better performance than those who only build relationships or answer questions.
Think about it: the salesperson who stands out is not the one who agrees with everything the customer says. It’s the one who helps the customer think differently.
A real case: when inbound puts the team to sleep
When I arrived at a company whose work was practically 100% inbound, one of the first things that caught my attention was the passivity of the pre-sales team. It was a very good team, but completely guided by the customer’s rhythm and movement.
I spoke with the CEO and told him he had many order takers, but very few salespeople. I proposed a sequence of training sessions to “awaken” this sales outlook and action, and the results were incredible. The team understood fundamental aspects about lead response time and initial engagement, and this generated a direct impact on pre-sales results, which had been worryingly declining.
This is proof that even when the customer reaches out, they still need to be won over.
But why are there so many order takers disguised as salespeople?
I believe there are several factors that contribute strongly and directly to this. I’ll focus on the main ones.
The problem starts with hiring
The first factor is the type of hiring, which involves the relationship between HR and sales managers. It’s still very common to look for people without experience for the pre-sales area, but who demonstrate a minimum of communication skills.
The point is that a pre-salesperson is also a salesperson, only they work in the initial part of the sale. They are responsible for the initial engagement, for qualification (filtering opportunities), and for “committing” the customer to the next phase, as they are responsible for passing the baton to the sales team.
And when hirings fail to analyze whether the candidate has a minimally curious or proactive outlook on things, if they’re not afraid or have difficulty dealing with many “nos” per day, if they’re uninhibited enough to be able to ask the customer questions without feeling embarrassed, they will probably act very passively and transform their work routine into doing the basic package of questions and limit themselves to what the lead says.
Especially when we talk about people who don’t know how to deal with “no” and work within the sales universe, because being a salesperson means receiving many negatives before getting to a “yes.” And if dealing with this scenario is something that demotivates, over time rejection of the function/scope of work begins to set in, and inevitably many begin to avoid extending themselves with leads who present even a minimum challenge, which is terrible for a sector that lives on communication and exchange with the customer.
When the vision of sales is about “having the gift of gab”
You’d be surprised to know the number of salespeople who still believe that sales is only persuasion, that the way of speaking and pressuring the customer is still what “works” in sales, underestimating studies, techniques and, mainly, active listening to make a difference in a negotiation.
I believe there is a strong culture that still sees sales as a low-qualification environment where it’s enough to be extroverted and talkative to do well. And many salespeople who did well without having much experience seem to validate this.
However, there’s a world of difference between selling to someone who’s already decided to buy and helping people who need it, but who aren’t yet convinced. Efficiency occurs in all aspects and many use techniques that, in many cases, they don’t know have already been the subject of research and study.
The truth is that sales is a profession that requires seriousness, dedication and, yes, a lot of study. It’s not about “having the gift of gab” – it’s about mastering techniques, understanding human behavior, knowing how to ask the right questions and, mainly, knowing how to listen.
Harvard Business Review research with more than 3,200 sales professionals showed that active listening skills are among the three most important factors for building relationships with clients, even surpassing persuasion skills. A Gong.io study that analyzed more than 25,000 B2B sales calls found that high-performance salespeople talk only 43% of the time, while average salespeople talk 72% of the time. In other words, the best salespeople listen more than they talk. Ironic, isn’t it?
So no, it’s not just “talent” or “gift of gab” – it’s technique, it’s study, it’s method.
And here’s the crucial point: companies that understand this and take the training of their commercial teams seriously are light-years ahead of those that still think it’s enough to hire “people who are good at conversation.” According to the Sales Management Association, companies that invest in continuous sales training have 50% greater net revenue growth per salesperson and 17% greater quota attainment.
Training your team is not a cost – it’s an investment that pays off. And more: it’s a demonstration that you understand that sales is a serious profession that deserves constant development.
Processes that kill the sale
And when this misguided vision of sales combines with bureaucratic processes, we have the perfect recipe for creating order takers.
The processes and culture of the company lead pre-salespeople and salespeople to look at sales as an almost administrative, sequential and bureaucratic process. It focuses on information records, specific and sequential questions, where a lead that responds differently already breaks the whole process and the salesperson gets lost.
The sales process becomes rigid, focused on following pitches where the salesperson’s creativity is not explored, but rather contained and programmed.
And here’s a scary fact: Salesforce research showed that salespeople spend only 28% of their time actually selling. The rest? Administrative tasks, internal meetings, and data entry in the CRM.
Think about it: you hire a salesperson to sell, but they spend 72% of their time doing everything but that. And then the company wonders why results don’t come.
And if you think this correlation doesn’t make sense to draw, I have one more fact: the Goal Setting Theory concept, by Edwin Locke and Gary Latham, showed that when goals and the compensation system prioritize operational actions – such as number of CRM records, number of calls or emails sent, speed of handoff – instead of quality goals, such as depth of qualification or customer satisfaction, professionals naturally prioritize bureaucracy.
They act like operators or order takers, focused on “completing actions” to hit targets, not on actually selling. It’s the system incentivizing the wrong behavior.
When freeing up the salesperson makes all the difference
I saw this in practice at another company. During certain times of the year, there was a large volume of work and salespeople got bogged down. At this company, salespeople were also responsible for generating all payment links for customers and handling payment collection.
I negotiated with the company’s director and the finance department that, during such a crucial conversion period for the company, salespeople should be free and totally focused only on sales. They agreed and the result was excellent.
In addition to developing the team, we also freed them up to dedicate themselves only to selling – what I call the Curling Method. We also organized customer handling strategies according to each salesperson’s individual skills. The result? We not only reached the goal, but exceeded it by approximately 43%. An excellent result, but we know that the reality of many “sales machines” is quite far from this, especially when sales professionals seem to have to do everything except dedicate themselves to selling.
The alienation of the salesperson: workers on an assembly line
This leads us to consider another important aspect: the alienation of the salesperson in the commercial process as a whole.
It’s possible to compare them to factory workers who only look at the part they’re assembling, without having any idea of the car they’re helping to build. They know how to tighten screws, but don’t understand the engineering behind the engine. They know how to follow the protocol, but don’t understand the purpose.
When a salesperson doesn’t understand the complete commercial process – from demand generation to post-sale, through the customer’s decision journey – they can’t have argumentative flexibility. They don’t know how to deal with different questions from the customer because they only memorized the script, they didn’t understand the logic.
They know they need to ask X, Y and Z, but don’t know why they’re asking. They know they need to fill in the CRM fields, but don’t understand how that information impacts the negotiation. They follow the steps, but don’t understand the strategy.
And when you have salespeople alienated from the process, you don’t have salespeople. You have task executors. Order takers.
What sales really is
Being a salesperson is definitely not about pushing products onto other people. It’s about understanding the other person and helping them make the right decision.
Sales is about human behavior, about time management, about assertive communication, active listening, negotiation, but mainly it’s about empathy. About looking at the other person and understanding how they think, what they want and what they fear.
Sales is a great moment of connection with the lead, if you conduct the process that way. Otherwise, we’ll be like the order taker we opened this text with: we just want to ensure that questions are answered and that they’re directed as quickly as possible to another phase.
From this we can express the maxim that every salesperson is an order taker, but not every order taker is a salesperson.
What’s the cost of not perceiving this difference?
Ignoring that commercial processes may be contributing to this commercial atrophy can, in the simplest expression, make your company not only lose money but also lose the opportunity to positively spread your brand.
I say this because even if the customer doesn’t close with you, your good work will make them refer you to other people, the so-called “word-of-mouth marketing,” which is extremely relevant. People love and trust referrals.
Therefore, it’s always important to verify what criteria are used for hiring people for the commercial team, as well as the daily processes required in the routines of each team member, and continuous training focused on commercial techniques.
If your commercial team of salespeople or pre-salespeople is more focused – and often bogged down – in increasingly bureaucratic and administrative routines that distance them and “undermine” the use of their creativity and technical-commercial approaches; if they use questions as a mere way to comply with information registration protocols, there’s a great chance you’re cultivating order takers. And your results may feel the impact of this.
You can’t “leave for later” when it comes to training the team, reviewing commercial processes and reviewing hiring formats. There’s no company that survives without sales, so it’s essential to have focused salespeople who are free to sell. Period.
Having a differentiated look at hiring to avoid those who are out of profile – because wrong hires are expensive in every sense: time, money and lost opportunities. Avoiding having your commercial structure kill the energy and unique skills that true salespeople possess. And seeking that day-to-day operations stimulate the investigative and problem-solving bias that every person working in sales should have.
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The question that won’t go away
If you’ve made it this far, you’re probably already doing the math: how many of your “salespeople” are actually well-meaning order takers trapped in processes that prevent them from selling or those who have no profile whatsoever to be in the sales area, right?
The good news is that recognizing the problem is already halfway there. The bad news is that ignoring this reality has a high price: lost opportunities, poorly served customers, demotivated teams and results that could be exponentially better.
Transforming order takers into salespeople is not about pressure or more aggressive goals. It’s about rethinking processes that bureaucratize instead of enabling. It’s about hiring with criteria, because profile matters more than resume. It’s about training continuously, because sales techniques are not optional, they’re essential. And it’s about giving autonomy, because creativity and flexibility are powerful weapons in the hands of those who know how to sell.
And in this universe, we cannot forget that every conversation is an opportunity. Every well-worked opportunity is a potential sale. Every sale is growth.
So I ask you again: today can you see more order takers or salespeople around you? And more importantly: are you willing to do something about it?
If yes, click here and schedule a Sales Chat with us. A light conversation to understand your scenario and learn how we can help your commercial team.
Great transformations begin when we stop postponing what we already know needs to change.
See also: X-MIND Commercial Diagnosis with Intelligence and a Focus on B2B Conversion | Leading is not about having all the answers: it’s about creating the conditions for them to emerge
References
- HubSpot Research (2023). “State of Inbound Report”
- Dixon, M. & Adamson, B. (2011). “The Challenger Sale: Taking Control of the Customer Conversation”
- Harvard Business Review (2017). “The New Sales Imperative”
- Gong.io (2019). “Data-Driven Sales: What Really Works in Sales Conversations”
- Sales Management Association (2017-2018). “Sales Training Impact Study”
- Salesforce (2022). “State of Sales Report”
- Locke, E. A.; Latham, G. P. (2006). “New Directions in Goal-Setting Theory”. Current Directions in Psychological Science
